1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to the field of automatic monitoring of cable television use, and more particularly, to a system and method for permitting viewership behavior to be analyzed while guaranteeing the anonymity of the individual viewers.
2. Description of Related Art
The following references are related to cable systems or data systems and the handling of communications between the users.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,289,514 (Link et al.), which is assigned to the same Assignee as the present invention, namely, QCOM TV, Inc., discloses a system and method for identifying television programming, identifying and capturing consumer behavior as regards such programming and providing a near-real time reporting of that information to interested parties while providing verification of actual delivery of advertising and/or program content.
WO 02/05568 (Link et al.) discloses a system and method for providing television programming which has been enabled for interactive purchase by viewers using their set top boxes over multiple channels for multiple merchant products/services and for delivering those purchase requests to the parties who provide fulfillment and billing for those requests. This system/method uses encryption in the transmission of purchase/transaction messages from viewers but, unlike the present invention, the source of the message needs to be known in order for the purchased item/services to be delivered to the originator of the request.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,835,087 (Herz, et al.) discloses a system for the generation of object profiles for customized electronic identification of desirable objects, such as news articles, in an electronic media environment. A target profile interest summary is generated for each user and a cryptographically-based pseudonym proxy server is used to provide the user with control over the ability of third parties to access this summary and to identify or contact the user. However, among other things, this system requires that the user actively participate in the establishment of the profile and this proxy server is able to translate from an individual to a pseudonym and then vice versa.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,872,588 (Aras et al.) discloses a monitoring system for audio-visual materials presented to subscribers and includes a privacy setting that allows the subscriber to prevent his/her viewing habits from being transmitted.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,245,656 (Loeb, et al)teaches how one might protect individually identifiable information by combining the use of an “authority”, to translate from an individual ID (identification) to a pseudonym and back, with the use of profile data transmitted in encrypted form from a service provider computer. However, unlike the present invention, the “authority” in this system has the ability to translate in both directions.
U.S. patent application No. US 2002/0073435 (Handelman) discloses a cable TV system that uses a cable TV network, a multiplicity of subscriber units, and apparatus for transmitting encrypted information over the network of individually-addressed information to a subscriber unit and apparatus associated with each of the multiplicity of subscriber units for decoding the encrypted information.
U.S. patent application No. US 2002/0019781 (Shooks et al.) discloses a method and system for facilitating the anonymous purchase of goods and services from an e-commerce website. Funds are credited to a card account number in advance of use of a preset amount. However, a user of the card is anonymous by virtue of there being no name associated with the card. Use of this system requires active participation by the consumer to acquire the anonymous funds card.
U.S. patent application No. US 2002/0073046 (David) discloses a system and method for secure network purchasing and which uses encryption techniques to generate a password from a seed stored in a user's configuration file on the user's computer. However, use of this system requires the active participation of the consumer to establish an account with the merchant or service provider.
U.S. patent application No. US 2002/0108122 (Alao et al.) discloses a system for managing delivery of interactive television content from multiple diverse content or service sources to one or more set top boxes and managing the transaction dialogue from those set top boxes back to the diverse services. It provides a gateway and translation function which allows a set top box to interact with multiple services and content streams while only having to understand the one set of rules and protocols. Though encryption is discussed at various points, it does not make the set top box anonymous.
U.S. patent application No. US 2002/0108040 (Eskicioglu) discloses a method for providing conditional access to a received scrambled audio/visual signal from a variety of sources, e.g., broadcast TV networks, CATV networks, digital satellite systems and Internet service providers.
U.S. patent application No. US 2002/0107909 (Eyer et al.) discloses a method that allows a user who has access to an audio/visual object to cause an interactive control element of an interactive multimedia system to grab and store for future retrieval the audio/visual object by activating a selection mechanism of the interactive multi-media.
U.S. patent application No. US 2002/0108121 (Alao et al.) discloses a service gateway that provides a proxy between a client protocol and a plurality of standard communication protocols and utilizes encryption for interactive television.
U.S. patent application No. US 2002/0099948 (Kocher et al.) discloses a system whereby, before use, a population of tamper-resistant cryptographic enforcement devices is partitioned into groups and is issued one or more group keys. Each tamper-resistant device contains multiple computational units to control access to digital content. One of the computational units within each tamper-resistant device communicates with another of the computational units acting as an interface control processor, and which serves to protect the contents of a nonvolatile memory from unauthorized access.
U.S. patent application No. US 2002/0104098 (Zustack et al.) discloses a system whereby a subscriber class leases and provides programming for a digital television channel using the 2-way communication capabilities of a digital set top box. Encryption/decryption is used to prevent unauthorized access to programming content and whereby a decryption key can be transmitted over a video channel, or other communication channel, via modem.
U.S. patent application No. US 2002/0108034 (Hashem et al.) discloses a system and method for automatically encrypting and decrypting data for transmission using a process whereby a file is retrieved from a destination-based transmit folder, encrypting the file and then transmitting the file to an outgoing folder to the destination. The file is encrypted with an encryption process associated with the destination-based transmit folder.
U.S. patent application No. US 2002/0104083 (Hendricks et al.) discloses a system supporting targeted advertising directed to television terminals connected to an operations center or cable headend.
“Untraceable Electronic Mail, Return Addresses, and Digital Pseudonyms” by David Chaum (Communications of the ACM, Vol. 24, No. 2, Feb. 1981) teaches how encryption techniques can be used in conjunction with an intermediary authority to mask the source of an email while providing a mechanism by which the recipient can respond to the originator without disclosing who the originator might be. However, this approach requires that the “authority” be able to both encode and decode the originator's address.
“A Secure and Privacy-Protecting Protocol for Transmitting Personal Information between Organizations” by Chaum and Evertse demonstrates a proof that relies on the active participation of individuals (or their agent) to monitor and coordinate the distribution of personal information among organizations. In this instance, the “authority” is the individual who can associate the private information with a particular ID or pseudonym.
Thus, there remains a need for a system and method of guaranteeing the anonymity of the source of a message (wherein the source is coupled to a cable television system for receiving television programming content therefrom) but allowing the content of the message to be analyzed by a downstream entity without requiring intervention by the originator of the message.
All references cited herein are incorporated herein by reference in their entireties.